START SMALL, THINK BIG
small m ighty Dung Beetle
by Mary Auld
illustrations by Hannah Bailey
small m ighty
Dung Beetle
by Mary Auld
illustrations by Hannah Bailey
consultant
Sally-Ann Spence, FLS, FRES
Here is a fresh pile of elephant dung. It is poop that elephants leave all over the grasslands of Africa. That’s good for me. I am a dung beetle, and I love to eat poop.
All animals produce poop or dung. It is the waste left over when they digest their food.
What is waste for an elephant is food for dung beetles. It contains lots of goodness, energy, and nutrients.
Can you find me in the dung?
I am small and green. Other dung beetles are coming to feast.
There are over 100 species of dung beetle in this type of African grassland, known as the savanna.
Dung beetles work fast. Together, they can clear a pile of elephant dung in two hours.
A dung beetle is an insect. Insects have hard outer skeletons (exoskeletons), six legs, two antennae, and three parts to their bodies.
Antennae are sensors. Dung beetles use them to smell.
Most insects have wings. A dung beetle’s wings are hidden under hard outer wings.
head
thorax
abdomen
Here I am making a dung ball. The dung is nice and fresh—so easy to shape. A male beetle flies in to help me. I am female and will need a strong mate. Soon we will have a family.
Dung beetles have a specially shaped beak called a clypeus (clip-ee-us) to cut dung. They shape the ball with their front legs.
Dung beetles find their mates on piles of dung. They make a dung ball together, or sometimes the male gives one to the female.
Dung beetles can fly as far as 30 miles in their search for dung.
Now our ball is ready. I sit on top while my mate rolls it. He pushes it with his back legs, keeping his front legs on the ground.
A beetle can push a ball for 650 feet or more—that’s a long way when you are only half an inch long.
We travel in a straight line. Our journey is hard work!
To us, a small ridge is a mountain and grass is a thick forest.
The ancient Egyptians had a god called Khepri who was often drawn as a dung beetle. They believed that Khepri pushed the sun into the sky each day, just like a dung beetle pushes its ball.
Here we are burying our dung ball.
One of us tunnels under the ground, while the other pushes the ball down the hole. Then we mate to make a family.
A pair of dung beetles make a burrow to hold their dung ball. They choose a spot where the soil is soft and easy to dig.
My mate leaves, and I carefully lay an egg in the dung ball. Then I close up the ball.
Dung beetles mate underground. The male fertilizes the female’s eggs so baby dung beetles will grow in them.
Each egg needs its own dung ball to protect it and provide the baby with food when it hatches.
But I have more eggs to lay, so I need more poop! It will be hard work on my own.
Here is another dung beetle with a ball of dung. It looks so good—I am going to steal it!
It seems mean, but for dung beetles it is a useful way to survive. Collecting dung and making balls takes time and energy.
Dung beetles often steal each other’s dung balls.
We fight and I push her off— the ball is mine!
I work day and night to have enough balls for my eggs.
Normally, I use the sun to find my way back to my burrow. In the dark, I am guided by the glow of the Milky Way.
The Milky Way is the name of our galaxy of stars.
On a clear night, you might see the Milky Way looking like a white and hazy cloud across the sky. It looks brighter in places like the savanna where there are fewer lights from buildings and streets.
Two weeks later, my babies hatch from their eggs. They don’t look like beetles yet. They start to eat their dung balls immediately.
A baby insect is called a larva. The plural is larvae. Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies. Beetle larvae are sometimes called grubs.
The larvae’s dung balls give them all the food they need.
My babies eat and grow, shedding their skins as they develop.
Safe in their burrows, my babies grow bigger than me. I hope they don’t get eaten. This honey badger looks hungry!
Some animals, such as honey badgers and mongooses, smell out the burrows and dig up the larvae, but they don’t find them all.
After a few weeks, my babies rest. Their skins harden. Inside this hard case, they are changing.
Like most insects, a dung beetle has different growth stages in its life, where it changes a lot. This is called metamorphosis (met-a-morf-oh-sis).
A beetle’s life cycle is similar to that of a butterfly.
The larva eats as much food as it can. Then it becomes a pupa, when its body changes into an adult using the energy from all that food.
When my babies come out of their dung balls, they are full-grown green dung beetles.
EGG
LARVA
PUPA
Look! My babies are climbing out of the burrow. My hard work has protected them—and it has helped plants grow, too.
For plants to grow well, soil needs air to pass through it. Dung beetle tunnels help this.
Seeds are inside grazing animals’ dung, too. When buried, they can grow into plants for animals to eat.
Dung, with all the broken-down plant matter in it, is a natural compost. That is good for savanna plants.
One by one, my young stretch out their wings and fly. Can you see them? They go out across the savanna in search of tasty piles of poop.
Dung beetles have two pairs of wings but only use one to fly.
The hard outer wings cover the delicate flying wings beneath them. Beetles open the covers to buzz into the air.
They need to be careful. Lions like to eat antelope, but birds, lizards, and small mammals like to eat beetles!
The savanna is an important habitat. Lots of different plants and animals live and feed there.
Some animals feed on plants. Some feed on other animals. This creates food chains.
Animals and birds may eat a dung beetle—and then another predator might eat them!
Most food chains begin with plants. Dung beetles form part of the chain by eating the poop of animals that eat plants or other animals.
Here are animals on the move. The huge herds make more poop to clear up than my family and I can eat. Fortunately, we have help from all the different types of dung beetle.
Not all dung beetles are rollers like me. Some tunnel under the poop, and others live in it!
Dwellers live, or dwell, in the poop— eating their home and laying their eggs in it.
Rollers make and take away dung balls from a pile of dung.
Tunnelers burrow down under a pile of dung to raise their young.
All these beetles help clear the dung quickly. Pests like flies don’t hang around and the grass grows quickly.
In parts of Africa, herds of grazing animals migrate across the land. They follow seasonal rains in search of fresh grass. Over a million wildebeests cross the Serengeti, along with zebras and other animals.
AFRICA
TANZANIA KENYA
KENYA
TANZANIA
Here I am on a fresh pile of rhino dung. Can you see me? Soon, I will find another mate and have a new family.
Dung beetles of the savanna usually mate in the rainy season or during the migration when there is plenty of fresh, wet dung.
The African savanna is home to many threatened or endangered animals, like rhinos. Dung beetles help protect their habitats.
I will make lots of dung balls and lay lots more eggs. My larvae will hatch, grow, change, and start families of their own.
This type of dung beetle is called Garreta nitens. It is a species that lives for around three years. Other species can live as long as five years, some only six months.
All around the world, dung beetles like me are busy munching. We help clear up all kinds of poop, from rhinos to cattle.
Here are life-size images of some of the 5,000 species of dung beetle. Imagine them on your hand.
Garreta nitens
.05–.07 inch
Minotaur beetle
Typhaeus typhoeus
.06–.09 inch
Aphodius pedellus
.02–.03 inch
Onthophagus australis
.04–.05 inch
Onitis alexis
.06–.08 inch
Spider beetle
Sisyphus spinipes
.03–.04 inch
Only a few dung beetles have a common name, such as minotaur beetle. Most species are only identified by their unique scientific names.
Rainbow scarab
Phanaeus vindex
.04–.08 inch
Copris elphenor
.08–1 inch
Onthophagus
nigriventris
.04–.05 inch
Onthophagus vacca
.03–.05 inch
In eating the poop, dung beetles help habitats stay healthy and protect their future. We may be small but we do a mighty job for our world—and yours!
Animal farmers around the world encourage dung beetles into their fields by using less chemicals.
The dung beetles clear up the cow pies, which means fewer flies and parasites.
Cattle farmers can tell how many dung beetles are in a field by looking in fresh cow pies and sifting through soil.
Just like in the savanna, the dung beetles keep soil healthy, so there is more grass for the cows to eat.
START SMALL...
This is the life cycle that begins with two small beetles burying a ball of dung to hold an egg. It leads to a baby hatching, changing, and then emerging from the ball as a full-grown adult dung beetle.
SERENGETI I-SPY
Find these Serengeti animals somewhere in the book. Do they come out during the day or at night?
pupa changes into an adult inside its hard case
female lays egg larva hatches
parents make a dung ball
There are large areas of grasslands in Africa, particularly to the south of the Sahara Desert. Dung beetles live in all of them.
Savanna grasslands have trees and bushes scattered through the grasses.
THINK BIG!
THE STRONGEST
The horned dung beetle Onthophagus taurus is the world’s strongest animal relative to its size. It can move something 1,141 times its own body weight. Compare that with the world’s strongest men, who have moved buses 156 times their own body weight.
PICKY EATERS
Even though dung beetles eat poop, they are picky eaters! They only eat the dung that is rich in the nutrients they need to build their muscles.
larva begins to eat the dung
adult dung beetle emerges
dung beetle flies away
The African grasslands cover more land than those found in any other continent and are home to many different plants and animals. They are an important habitat
WHERE DUNG BEETLES LIVE
THE LARGEST
The biggest dung beetles can grow as big as 2.75 inches long. From a species group called Heliocopris, these beetles feed on the poop of big animals such as elephants.
DAILY DISH
One elephant in the savanna poops enough dung to feed over two million dung beetles in a day—and they make dung balls with the rest so it all gets used.
The orange area on this world map shows where dung beetles live—on every continent except Antarctica! They live wherever there is dung to eat. Species are found not just in grasslands but also forests, farmland, and deserts.
Dung Beetle
This story starts with a small green beetle feeding on a fresh pile of elephant dung. She is a dung beetle with super strength and extraordinary senses. Read about how she turns the dung into protection and food for her babies, and how, in doing so, she helps all the animals of the African savanna.
This story ends with a fold-out map.
Unfold a world of discovery with this series that takes readers from the small and familiar to new areas of knowledge where you really have to think big.
